1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to software that allows users and applications to communicate and interact with one or more general-purpose application-accessible data sources, and to a method of using the software. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to a simplified and intuitive means of accessing, presenting, manipulating, and modifying data associated with the one or more data sources, such as databases or database management systems (DBMSs).
2. Background of the Invention
Businesses frequently use databases to store critical business information. For example, a business may use a database to store information about employees, clients, products, sales, inventories, and other information. Very often, the businesses rely upon the databases to perform normal business operations, and easy and efficient use and updating of the databases is critical to business success.
Additionally, using and updating databases is frequently neither easy nor efficient. Frequently, databases are equipped with special software, called a database management system (DBMS), to enhance the ease of use and efficiency of using and updating the database. However, even with a DBMS, using and updating the database still requires programming skills, such as knowledge of a specialized database access language. For example, considering an Oracle ODBC database, available from Oracle Corporation of Redwood City, Calif., communication with the database requires knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL). Although SQL is a de facto standard for databases, non-database programmers seldom know this language. Consequently, many small businesses without dedicated database programmers, and less-technical users of larger corporations cannot take full advantage of the potential wealth of information available in the databases.
Unfortunately, many businesses have multiple databases of different types. Accordingly, using and updating enterprise data frequently requires specialized knowledge of not one, but multiple database languages. This makes it very difficult and inefficient to use and update these databases for routine and day-to-day business operations. Importantly, this is a significant impediment to data integration within an organization or between business partners. Ultimately, many businesses recognize the shortcomings of this legacy-database approach, and periodically scrap the older databases and upgrade to a consistent format. Such drastic actions are time consuming, expensive, and undesirable.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a means of accessing, presenting, and manipulating data from databases that reduces the technical barriers currently associated with such activities. There is further needed a means that allows businesses to better access, present, and manipulate data residing in different types of databases.